LXXIX. Thomas Gokins

OUR Father, which doest sit on heauen’s high throne,

All praise and glory be to thee alone.

Our Father—where or how shall we begin?

Thou high and pure, we deeply fraught with sin.

Can we the organs be to sound thy praise,

Which, chain’d to earthly clogs, can no way raise

Our thoughts on high beyond our earthly leuell?

We cannot raise ourselues, but when we reuell

In anticke pleasures, or in fond delights,

Or when we feede our eyes with pleasing sights,

When we to thee do pray, we feare like blockes;

When thou to vs dost speake, we stand like stockes.

We have no sence of thy great loue or powre,

Or that the zeale of thee should vs deuoure,

We neede not feare. Wee vnderstand thee not;

No, nor our selues: we are the staine and blot

Of all thy workmanship; for we recoile

When we should doe our charge, and alwayes soile

Our best performance with some muddy thought.

What shall we say, Lord? we are worse than nought.

From the first moouing spheare vnto earth’s center

All creatures faile thee not; but man dares venture

To stray and wander, like a blazing starre,

Foreshewing troubles, change, dearth, and warre.

Thou lookest down from heaven, thy statefull throne,

And doing good thou didst behold not one.

We have our naturall corruption within,

Which since our fall is alwayes prone to sinne:

We have the world without vs, and the diuell

To draw and lead us to a world of euill.

We are not worth the silly widowe’s mite;

How canst thou then in our poore gifts delight?

’Tis true, O Lord, the widowe’s gift was small—

A lesser gift could not be giuen at all;

Yet was the mite accepted well from her,

Which, being poore, did all she had conferre.

But we have nothing good; no, not a motion;

Nor one poore drop of grace but from thine ocean.

And all our store is but meere pouerty,

Except thine all-sufficient grace supply;

But so supplied, thou takest recreation

In one good thought, or one eiaculation:

Our poore endeauors and desires of good

By thee as reall acts are vnderstood.

Our Father, then, we may thee iustly call,

Our Treasure, King, our Lord, our All in all.

Let Three in One be ioyn’d in adoration,

As Three in One were in the world’s creation.

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